THIS ARTICLE WAS UPDATED WITH NEW INFORMATION ON April 24 and April 25, 2024.

How well could you do customer service and add value to your customers’ experience if you didn’t have to be cleaning clothes all day long? That’s what one company excels in, and we’re taking a look at how they do it.

WeDoLaundry is a bit of a misnomer, since the company really does everything except the laundry. They call themselves “The Uber of Dry Cleaning and Laundry”. Basically, they pick up the dirty clothes, take them to neighborhood dry cleaners or laundromats, and return them clean again. They are the service end of the process, and you can learn a lot from what they’re doing.

Who are these people?

Abhishek Arora and Mini Bhalla emigrated from India to Canada with backgrounds in Information Technology and a desire to create a viable company. In 2018, they launched a pilot project in Lower Mainland Vancouver area to pick up dirty clothes and return clean ones. They do the customer-interfacing part of the job, and leave the actual cleaning to professionals. The company has grown from that initial start-up to have service throughout Vancouver, Toronto and now Calgary.

A prospectus for funding describes WeDoLaundry as a “provider of an on-demand laundry and dry cleaning pickup and drop off service.” It goes on to say, “The company picks up its clients’ dirty clothing from the location of their choice, deposits them into the care of professional and experienced cleaners, and delivers the garment back to the clients washed, fluffed and folded, thereby allowing its clients to enjoy freshly done laundry without having to take time out of their day.”

Abhishek is not shy in stating his goal for his company: “My vision is to revolutionize and modernize the personal laundry business in Canada,” he said.

Why are we talking about this?

The theme of this series of articles is Value Adding Ideas. From the standpoint of customer relations, WeDoLaundry has it nailed. They hit so many of the boxes we listed in the opening article as the most important areas in which customers look to you for service.

• They facilitate communication with customers through a dedicated app (only accessible for download if you are in an area they serve) that allows customers to schedule pickups and deliveries and other services.
• The app includes mobile payment, so there is no cash-handling required of drivers.
• Service is personalized. Customers can even bag parts of their order separately with separate wash instructions of their own.
• They have an easy-to-understand website that walks the customers through the process.
• They emphasize customer benefits (like saying they have processed 1,000,000 pounds of laundry, made 50,000 pickups, served 6,500 customers and saved their customers 150,000 hours of boring labour.)
• They include customer reviews on the website, knowing 80% of today’s customers look for those.

They just don’t have to clean the clothes, or maintain the machines, pay leases on plant locations or deal with all the other things you do. They’re free to focus on the customers and their needs.

Customers want Clarity

The website walks a potential customer through the easy process.

1. You Schedule Your Pickup — Schedule your pickup according to your availability. Our staff member will arrive right at your doorstep at a time convenient for you!
2. We Pickup & Co-ordinate With Laundromats — Our drivers will take your laundry to professional laundromats and dry cleaners near you for washing, drying and folding. We make sure the cleaners use 100% eco-friendly and high-quality detergents.
3. We Deliver Your Clean Laundry — We will return your laundry in 12-48 hours and dry cleaning in 2-3 business days in a 100% eco-friendly green bag.

It then directs them to the app to get started.

The company offers a 100% guarantee of the work done. When we asked how they can make that statement about work they are essentially farming out, Abhishek said, “In the early days, it was harder. As we got into the business it was clear people had specific requests and we had to learn how to meet those requirements. Now they have the option to choose all those add-ons to their services (like items they want washed in cold water or hang-dried.) If something goes wrong, we give them a rewash option or refund them the fees.

“We do a lot of work qualifying our washers,” he said. “Sometimes it is difficult to communicate with those who don’t speak English as well. But we make it easy for them to understand the needs of our clients and what we need done.”

There is no mystery about what the service will cost. Laundry is billed by the pound. Dry cleaning is billed by a set list of prices — all displayed on the website. Fees for pickup/delivery are spelled out, as are those for last-minute cancellation or for quicker turn-around.

Tapping into another customer need, the company offers storage services (for any kind of garments except wedding gowns) and charges a monthly fee based on the number of items. Customers can retrieve items whenever they need them.

“We essentially started the service because of the demands of people living in apartments or other small spaces,” Abhishek said. We have storage that we use for our own supplies like our bags and other things. We put the customer clothes in the same facility. We’re very transparent with them. We take photos of every garment, bag them properly and keep them safely. If a customer needs a particular item back, they can see all the ones they have with us by looking at the system and schedule a time for us to retrieve and deliver it.”

Apparently, the company is also considering on-demand alteration services, as well.

In addition to their eco-friendly laundry bags, WeDoLaundry also seeks to meet customer preferences by cleaning all laundry in a house-made plant-based laundry detergent, which they are planning to commercialize for sale.

What’s it got to do with you?

Obviously, these folks have spent a great deal of time studying customers who want their clothes and other items cleaned or laundered. They have come at the industry from the service side, and used their IT backgrounds to facilitate it. You can learn a lot about how to improve (or start) a similar service by looking at what they’re doing.

WeDoLaundry is not a competitor of cleaners and launderers, but an adjunct to them.

Despite the fact that many cleaners struggled or even closed during COVID, WeDoLaundry actually had its business pick up at that time. “People wanted their clothes cleaned but didn’t want to go out,” Abhishek said. “Laundromats and cleaners were Essential Services, so we could take the clothes to people who knew how to do the job, then take them back.”

Some of WeDoLaundry’s partner laundromats or cleaners have their own pickup and delivery services already. WeDoLaundry just increases the amount of business coming their way. “Our company is technology based, so we focus on that,” Abhishek said. “I come from a tech background, so I work to that strength. Many of the cleaners are not so technologically involved. We’d love to have more washers and cleaners to build an even bigger network of good service for our customers.”

Maybe you should give them a call, see if they serve your area, and strike up an agreement to have them bring some of those garments to you for professional cleaning. A service like this supports local businesses, creates jobs and can bring in garments you might never have seen before.

Check out the website. There’s contact information there to help you get in touch. It just might be the beginning of a nice partnership for you.

EXCITING UPDATE!

Abhishek forgot to tell us about his latest effort to build laundromat partners! WeDoLaundry is now giving out licenses (like a franchise) to laundromats that include the WeDoLaundry branding, free marketing/advertising benefits, and more. Thus far, five locations in the Vancouver area are on the program. They are working on the POS system to allow partners to accept payments via credit/debit cards as well.